For my documentary I have the idea to focus it on the life of a sixth former and what they like about the change from GCSE to A-Level and how it has changed their work ethic. My thoughts were to focus on about three sixth formers and how their life has changed since going up into sixth form.

At Ravens Wood in year 12 girls have the opportunity to join and boys also get the opportunity to join, my thoughts were to find a girl who has joined and a boy who has recently joined Ravens Wood so that you can see the different opinions of what have effected them about joining and how things may have changed. I also want to get a boy who has been at the school since year 7 for their opinion on how things have changed since new people joining and possibly some of their fiends leaving.

Interviews will be included in my documentary as I feel that I should observe the person that I am following as i need to see them in all there different areas but i think also observing them in a lesson to see if they are different to in there friendship group would be interesting as they might act differently, in the interviews I will have a background that shows that it is a learning environment that I am following.

For this documentary to work i need to find somebody with quite a bold distinctive voice to narrate certain parts of the documentary.

The beginning of the documentary will be being introduced to the people involved in the film. There will also be facts about the sixth form and how it works. We will show the students that we are following to make sure that you can see them before you are properly introduced.

As I am doing my documentary on my own I think I will ask somebody to help with the filming in order for me to get the shots that I am actually looking for.

After a few weeks of going over my documentary I have decided that I am going to have two of the boys in my class join my group simply because doing the filming by myself is quite hard so as long as I am in a group I can split the tasks up equally so the job can be done just as well as I want it to be done.

I am using Two boys (Oliver Friend, Tyler Lewis Kilden) and one girl (Jade Mason) this is a good ratio because I feel that in the school this is the ratio of boys to girls, this helps to show the difference between who is in the school, because these three people are from completely different friendship groups this helps to show different aspects of the school. Jade is a girl in the year below so she has a fresh outlook on the sixth form and the school. Tyler and Olly have been at the school since year 7 so they have seen how the school has changed over the years.

Wednesday, 1 October 2014

The Background When the government of Indonesia was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar and his friends were promoted from small-time gangsters who sold movie theatre tickets on the black market to death squad leaders. They helped the army kill more than one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese, and intellectuals in less than a year. As the executioner for the most notorious death squad in his city, Anwar himself killed hundreds of people with his own hands. Today, Anwar is revered as a founding father of a right-wing paramilitary organization that grew out of the death squads. The organization is so powerful that its leaders include government ministers, and they are happy to boast about everything from corruption and election rigging to acts of genocide.What is the main genre of this documentary (describe and explain)
With this documentary I found that the majority of the film was observational as there was minimal communication between the film maker and the audience. Joshua Oppenheimer would use long takes of the scenes to show how some of the events affect the people participating in the film from what has happened in the past.

Are their any sub-genres (critically evaluate other sub-genres and describe why it fits into these categories)?
Another genre used in this film was performative, they re-enacted events that had happened in the past and how the things they had done happened. It made Anwar Congo (the main person in the film who was an ex-gangster) by re-enacting the scenes of what he had actually done understand slowly over the 8years of filming the effect it caused to people. Performative documentary is quite personal to the people who are involved in telling the story.
Reflexive is also a sub-genre for this documentary, it was a representation of their community and how they feel that their community should be treated.

What relationship did Joshua Oppenheimer have with his subjects?
Joshua had learnt the native language of the country he was going to which helped him to be able to communicate on a social level with his subjects, but by Josh learning the language i recon that the people who he was working with would have respected him for that and one of the things that would have helped him trust him a bit more than others. Joshua also spent over 8years getting parts for his documentary so it would have meant that he would have spent quite a bit of time with the people so friendships would have formed over that time.

How did it help/hinder the documentary?
When filming this documentary Joshua went to the country wanting to find out the facts on what actually happened but because Indonesia is such a close nit community it would be hard for them to let out the information that Josh and his team needed. Joshua realised that he wasn't going to get what he wanted out of the people by going and asking questions so Joshua had to re-think the way he was going to find out information and because the people in that community always liked the idea of being a movie star, by offering them the opportunity to re-enact what happened in the past for Joshua to be able to get the information that he needed. After Joshua doing this it helped him to form a relationship with his subjects after that.

What was the relationship between the documentary and reality?
At the beginning of the documentary Anwar Congo wouldn't show any remorse to what he had done in the past and when talking about it he would talk about it as if what he had done wasn't wrong at all. Towards the end of the film you see that because Anwar was starting to show that it by him re-enacting the film it was really starting to effect him and he finally started to let his guard down about how what he did to people did actually effected him.

How did the documentary represent its ideas?
In a general documentary you find that there is normally a variety of visual and audio components, in this film there isn't any narration its just the people in the form telling there story, there was hardly any interviews involved in the film as it was about the people making there film and how they were going to do it. Because there wasn't any footage of what they used to do they had to re-enact it so it was quite dramatised as a whole. Instead of using music in the film they used silence as it made you think more about the realisation on what they were thinking.

Wednesday, 24 September 2014

There are various types of documentaries, in this case I have looked into six different types.

Participatory Documentary: When film makers get involved in the film and change the dynamics of the film. This is because they know different ways to heat up the documentary.
One of the examples that we used for the presentation was films by Michael Moore, a lot of his films he likes to contribute as he tests the people involved.

Poetic Documentary: Poetic documentaries often move away from the objective of the film as it is more of an artistic film. The majority of the film is visual imagery you will find that music is used more than speech to add to the artistic feel of the film. As the film is poetic you will find it will all link together to show the story as that is what a poem is all about.

Expository Documentary: This is a documentary that you will find you will have mainly a film with a narrator over the top who will directly speak to the viewers in a defined voice that draws the viewers into the film. There is a strong use of rhetorical questions that also draws the viewers into the film. David Attenborough is a prime example of a distinctive voice who can draw people into his programs because of the tone of his voice, he sometimes makes an appearance into the film but not very often.

Observatory Documentary: The film maker will tend to follow people around with a hand held camera to observe a persons lifestyle, you don't have interviews involved in the program/film because its about a persons life and there daily tasks and how they manage things. The film maker will tend to use basic shots such as, Pan shots and Extended shots to get a sense of it being a natural part of there lives. A prime example for this would be Teen Mom as you get to see how there lives have changed since 16 and Pregnant.

Performative Documentary: This is mainly re-enacted scenes as you might not be able to go back to what happened and the person might be permanently damaged from what has happened so they would have to re-enact it so that the audience could get the sense of the situation and how the people who were involved narrate the situation. This would also dramatise the film so it would draw people in to the film. Touching the void is a prime example of a performative documentary as they had to re-enact to get the effect of the programme.

Reflexive Documentary: In this type of documentary you will find that the director will cast himself in the film, it shows a first hand narrative to the story because they have experienced it and they know what they want the film to be like as they have been there and want to show people what happened. An example for reflexive documentary can be All this Mayhem it is a skating film which shows how the documentary was made with the director being involved and narrating how the film was made throughout it.

Friday, 19 September 2014

White Board iStopMotion
With our white board iStopMotion we managed to get a smooth movement with our shots as they became frequent. The only problem is that we ended up with the scenes being upside down.

For my advert I could use the white board work as it is easy to get things moving and you will be able to get to the point easier.

Lego iStopMotion
With the iStopMotion using lego we weren't very creative as we should have added more things to the scene. It would have been better if we used more characters and focused on the scene a bit more.

With Lego work you will find that its quite hard to get the right things to manage to get the right scene.

People and Objects

www: It was quite straight forward using the pens for objects, it went well because you could move them quite well

ebi: if i was to have made it more of a background and made sure my hand wasn't in the shot.

Overall the people and object one was really straightforward to do.

Paper Cut outs

www: the paper cut outs were really easy to use, i think that you will find that they are quite easy to use.

ebi: i would have cut out the extra features of each cut out to be able to move the paper cut outs more.

Clay Animation

www: the clay was really easy as you could re-sculp it and it would stick to the place so it wouldn't move easily.

In a news program you have the main presenters/journalists who are normally a man and a woman, they will be sat at a desk where you can often see whats going on behind them in the research rooms like at BBC.

To be a news reporter needs to be able to articulate themselves well in order for the information to be reported clearly. You often find that reporters are dressed smartly in suits as the presentation is key for their role as a news reporter.

Journalists have scripts to read from as they need to have the right information as the show is live so if information was to be reported in the wrong context the country could be confused on what is going on. When the news is on you will find that they often link to the field reports so if there was something major going on at Westminster you will have people reporting from there linking back to the studio at the end.

When talking about certain events in the news you will find that they will have images to relate to the situation, if it was something to do with the economy your most likely to have a picture with money (coins) and the title of the issue so that people quickly know what the next issue will be about.

At the bottom of the screen you will find that it will have a line where it states the time and the program that you are watching but it will also say if there are any breaking news issues that haven't been planned to happen throughout the program. When field reports are going on the name of the reporter will come up at the bottom of the screen and where they are reporting from.

In Documentaries you often find a various amount of conventions.

In a documentary it often starts with a voice over it is usually someone with an authoritative voice so it draws people in, this is encouraging to the audience to think that the person who is doing the voice over knows what they are talking about and have a specialist knowledge. There speech should be articulated clearly so that you can understand clearly.

Documentary is essentially seen as non-fiction although people are questioning this. However, a convention of a documentary is that all events presented to us are to be seen as real by the audience. Documentaries often go to a great lengths to convince us that the footage is real and unaltered in anyway, although editing and
voiceover can effect the reality of what the viewers see.

When it comes to documentaries you often see footage of situations that have happened in the past for example we watched a documentary called 'Touching the Void' this was a documentary about how two men climbed up Suila Grande mountain the footage used was re-enacted for the film as they had no archive footage.

In documentaries you often find that they have interviews with people who know about what they are talking about and they have a lot of experience in the area that they are talking about, sometimes you will find that the interviewee will disagree with the message of the documentary, although the film maker will usually disprove them in some way.

Text is often used so that the audience can keep up with the programme for example; if the place was to change they could put text at the bottom showing the name of the place that they are now at, it can range from the time of day to the date showing if there has been a change in something since that day.

In a documentary there is often a lot of sound used to show a mood or action of a person that is often called non-digetic sound, for example in the documentary 'Supersize me' the use of children's music that they use is how they undermine McDonalds to prove the point.

Conclusion

The difference between News and Documentary is you find that in news it is set up and they have a script so that they can show facts. However with documentaries you find that they are planned but not scripted, they are given a topic and broaden it and use facts too.
In fact documentaries are very similar to the news due to the fact they have to document things that are going on in the world and the documentaries are just a longer more detailed version of a news report but could be based on things that aren't as important as the problems on the news.

Thursday, 11 September 2014

Claymation (wallace and Gromit)Claymation was trademarked in 1978 by Will Vinton. Claymation is a type of stop motion animation, a time consuming process in which the subject is moved, then shot, the process is then repeated one frame at a time. Claymation was based for children as it is something that would attract them to watch it as it was something 3D moving. Wallace and Gromit was a very popular movie for children.

Paper cut outs (South Park)
cutout animation is pretty much what it sounds like: cut out shapes on a flat surface, and manually moved and repositioned to simulate animation. Cutouts can be coloured paper, white paper with drawings on it, even photographs, and can be completely flat or sometimes be 3D objects.
The target audience for cutout animation is also children/teens and south park is a prime example of cut out animation.
Sand (Twinings Advert)
Sand Animation is a term which has two meanings. It is the name given to a style of live performance art and to an animation type. A sand animation performer will often use the aid of an overhead projector or lightbox.

Lego (Death Star Canteen)
Lego animation is a type of animation where you can shoot on stop motion moving the object gradually to get it to move like you want it to so you can get a smooth moving film at the end but takes a lot of time.

People and Objects (Kindle Adverts)
With this type of stop motion it is an over head camera taking various shots of someone lying on the ground moving slowly by each shot. the target audience for this type of animation format would be someone over 20 who is interested in a different type of advert and of it being mature with adult products.

Animation is a popular type of media as it is very creative and often uses a lot of colour, this really appeals to audiences because sometimes programs lack in colour. It attracts children more than adults as they are more of a cartoon feel to them.

When doing your animation you need to be able to use stop motion in the right way so that you can import certain clips and transitions so that you can make the best possible animation.

Clips -When importing clips you need to go to the top of the page where it says "file" it should then drop down and you will see "Import" that will then open another drop down where it says "media" you should click on this and it will take you to the importing section where you can choose where to import footage from. After selecting what footage you would like to upload press "import selected" this will then import the footage so you are able to use it for editing.

Laying on the time line -
When it comes to putting the footage on to the time line you have a few options on how to do it. You can either select them one at a time and drag them to the timeline in the place that you want the footage to go. Another option would be to go to "edit" then "select all" this means that it will highlight all the footage so that you can drag all the footage into the timeline and it will all be in order.

Cutting -
When on final cut you can cut the footage down so that its the right length for what you are looking for. it can sometimes take a bit of time but you can shorten the clips to the length that you need by going to the drop dow of "Modify" then "change duration". This will then help you to alter the size of the clips.

Transitions
With final cut you can add transitions so that the video has something more to it. In order to do this you need to go to "edit" then "effects" then "video transitions" you can then choose the type of transition that you want to add to your video and how it will work for your video.

Adding Sound Effects and Music -
When importing sound effects and music you have to do the same as when importing images. once importing it in the same way you would drag it to the timeline and then place it underneath the footage that is above.

Exporting the Document -
When exporting your movie you need to go to "file" then down to "Export" then you want to export it as a quick time movie and then you can save it to your desktop so that it is easy to access.